Blood in Face
by Psychogirl777
Summary: presenting a self-made mininovel, a psychological thriller, Skyler is a normal man of the close future, until he is catapulted into madness and a world of the paranormal!
1. Blood in Face part 1: A Small Start

A nearly comatose sleep, he could only feel the throbbing numbness of it. Wrapped up and draped in bedding, his hands folded like a corpse, like he had always slept, the mind creating a reverberation of unrecognizable color under the lids of his eyes, though his eyes, pulled up so closely to the mysterious dreams that his brain displayed, followed ever so intently, he felt the horizon held something ominous. The crackling ring of five different alarms made his entire eyes quiver; he jumped, as if a monster under the couch bit his rear end. His head swooped from side to side, looking over the loud surroundings like a disturbed vulture. He hopped up onto his bare feet, cushioned by the lush teal carpeting, and sprinted over to the room where the procession of incessant noise was emitting itself from. Killing each one as swiftly as he could, he sat on the couch in the same room, panting.

"Morning~!"

His roommate heard the noise and decided to skip to the source, since he knew that he'd still be there.

"Sky! I said good morning! Aren't you going to answer me?"

Skyler looked over his shoulder, his thin brow curved outward in sadness, his short, slightly stringy black hair fluffed over his crystal blue eyes. The roommate paused.

"Y-you ok…?"

Sky got up and slowly walked out of the room.

"I'm fine; I just… don't feel very happy today…"

He spent his workdays at a boring convenient store; this was his only day off from either freight crew or filling the shelves with stuff that will probably never be bought. This became so redundant and tedious to him that a depression laid its heavy and crippling coat on his shoulders. Its human nature that he would wish for something more than being caged in an inert lifestyle.

"This is my only day off this month; I thought I turned these damned alarms off so I could sleep in."

Death registered as a vacation to Palm Springs, to him anyways. So sick of living in a locked environment, he knew that tomorrow he'd be praying to get into a car crash or being robbed and murdered on his way to work. He knocked the alarm clock from its pedestal, not budging an inch other than his arm, the clock rattled on the floor as it swayed back and forth, shaking its head no at the violence inflicted on it. The roommate jumped back, startled.

"I-I'm going to go get ready for work, you help yourself to the stuff in the kitchen."

Sky nodded.

"Sure, whatever, I'll probably have a granola bar or something."

He reclined on the couch, his light blue jammies un-ruffling as he stretched, the couch gurgled as its fabric shifted under him. He watched his roommate skitter out of the room like a frightened rat, but what was there to be so scared about? He hated the alarm clocks more than he hated his life, or rather his lifestyle, which still had the word life in it, something Skyler hated to compare.


	2. Blood in Face part 2: Screaming Mimis

After his roommate got ready for work and left for it. Skyler stayed behind, loitering in the kitchen and potato-ing on the couch, absorbing random TV shows, avoiding the government sponsored programs, which were on five different channels. This went on for three more hours. He sounded off the year, month and date in his brain to keep it from dying from deadly TV waves. Three thousand, November, the fifth. He turned to a news channel, still a war in the Middle East, but the USA isn't involved anymore, they just like to remind people once and a while of the clashing contrasts and the poor environs that encircle, even nurture it. Things seemed pretty normal besides the fact that there are hover cars now, though they are VERY expensive, and things seem to be getting more and more compact. He got up, and stretched, and started moving towards the kitchen.

But out of nowhere, some outer force surprised him, knocking him back a few inches, he almost lost his footing. He wasn't in his tiny little apartment any more; it looked like a gas chamber or an interrogation room with no tables or chairs. He could see two people in lab coats on the other side of a plastic window. Looking to his left he could see two people, a woman and a man, holding each other tightly as they cried. Out of the corner of his eye saw a quick white blur move around on the other side, moving up to the glass he could see it was a young girl, about the age of six, clasping a brown teddy bear in her tiny embrace. She had long, slightly poofy platinum blonde hair, and pale skin, but her crystal blue eyes showed that she was not an albino. He stared at the teddy bear she was holding, its golden brown fur looked soft, its round eyes and its cute smile was the eye of the storm.

He heard a whirr sound coming from above him; he looked up, and saw there were two vents on either side of the ceiling. A sudden hiss stung his ears as a blast of what seemed to be air entered the room. The man and the woman that were on his side of the glass started screaming, but not just screaming, the sound of their cries was bloodcurdling, further pushing invisible needles into his ears, no matter how hard he clasped his hands around them, the sting remained. He opened his eyes to look at the two who were screaming, to see what the cause was. A horrible shock tore its way through his body when he saw, they were melting…

Their skin was falling off, ligaments, muscles and other tissue turned to mush, and pools of blood formed under them, slowly expanding its way across the floor. It seemed his eyes were locked and even force would not shut them. Something unstable started boiling up inside him, jumping around, pounding in the inside of his underbelly, trying to get out. Every pound that it made, he would tremble and writhe, his hands glued to the sides of his head, but the sound of the hiss and their screaming, almost reduced to a gurgle now, though sounding as if it only started, found its way inside him. Every second would bring an even more violent array of shaking and writhing.

After what seemed like forever, he heard a cracking sound, like a walnut shell breaking; this sudden sound set him off. Whatever had found its way inside him came out in his own violent fits of screaming. He could barely hear himself over the noise in his ears, even though the hissing actually stopped, even though the two people on his side of the glass were dead, blood covered skeletons slumped over each other, the sound in his ears would not go silent or even change.

Still he screamed, as though his lungs would never run out of air, barely even stopping to breathe, and still contorting himself as he was before. He was stuck in a cacophony of incessant noise, not only the sound that was frozen in time to his ears, but his own. Whatever sanity he had left inside the dark corridors of his brain knew, he had completely lost control of his body, and is uncertain if he will ever gain control of himself again. Still his body persisted, the primal and shrill cries he emitted continued on, still in time with his seizures.

Soon, things started to slowly blur, like a perfectly respectable wet painting started to be smudged, and blacker was added until everything was a plain black canvas, and he had lost consciousness, and the noise was no more, slowly fizzled out with overuse, only echoes remained, forcing its way like bubbles through the black paint covering his mind in darkness. Another wave of strange energy filled him to the brim, he saw the child from before, crying, still in the place she was before, with the men who killed her parents closing in around her, he tried to move, to speak, but he was helpless. Everything suddenly faded to black again. He dwelled in emptiness and silence for an unknown amount of time, only with the echoes of his two previous experiences.


	3. Blood in Face part 3: Just Like Home

He heard a hum, or was it a groan? It sounded like one of those groan tubes he found in his attic from a millennium ago, it sounded like a word, but what word? He was blind and cold, shut out from the world. The word became more discernible as time went on though, but it was spoken slowly and over slightly elongated intervals of time. Finally he could recognize what someone was saying, it was his roommate's voice, and he was calling his name. his vision slowly faded in, he was back at his apartment, in one of the safe little rooms, the one he was in had all the clocks from when he was last there, but everything was a mess, like a burglar tore threw it to find something of value besides those damned clocks.

He felt a cold electric like shock around the torso of his body, up his neck, down his legs and arms, on the back of his neck, and up his jaw and face. He was slowly regaining the feeling in his body, only to realize how badly he was shivering, and that he couldn't move his hands from around his knees. He also realized that he was soaked in cold sweat, and he couldn't close his eyes, just like before.

"Skyler!"

His roommate shouted for the hundredth time, not even daring to touch him. He tried with all his might to close his eyes, finally succeeding, and feeling the hot sting of dryness cool under his eyelids, his hands let go, and he collapsed to the floor.

"Oh thank god! I thought you'd stay like that forever! Can you talk?"

He shook Sky gently, his eyes popped open again, and his roommate stopped shaking him, having to lean in to hear Sky speak.

"W-w-w-w-what h-h-happen-n-ned? W-w-where am I n-n-now? W-w-why c-can't I s-s-stop sh-sh-shivering?"

He forced the words out of his parched and incredibly sore throat, was it the screaming? Did it really happen?

"I-I really don't know, you've been like that for hours after I came home, I just FOUND you like that."

He said worriedly, Skyler tried to control his muscles, but the shaking was so severe, it was like he was awake while having a seizure.

"I-I think th-there's s-s-something w-wrong with m-me."

He slowly recognized the feel new streams of tears roll down his cheeks, over the crusted tears that were probably from before, trying to relax; he lay flat on the floor, trying to close his eyes. He could neither stop shaking nor could he force his eyelids to stretch far enough to close, the best he could do was lightly squint.

"Should I call an ambulance?"

More worries in his tone, Sky nodded.

"M-maybe t-they'll d-do s-s-something to sto-stop the s-shaking."

He felt so ill, even worse than all the sicknesses he got when he was a child, more than chicken pocks, fevers, colds, all of that combined.

"C-can't c-close my eyes. C-can't m-move either."

His tears stopped any burning or dryness that would have made it known. Feeling the structure of his body tighten into place as he tried to shift, he could feel his muscles going crazy, rebelling against the rest of his body.

"Okay, but i'll fix you up a bit first."

His roommate left for a minute or two to go rummage through the house. He came back with a blanket, and a sleeping mask. He wrapped the blanket tightly around Sky, to lessen the shaking and warm him up. He also put the sleeping mask on him, but used adhesive tape tied to a string to keep it over his eyelids.

"That'll at least take care of some of the scarier symptoms."

Sky nodded, which was the only thing he could do with his body.

"H-hey, Greg? T-thanks."

He smiled. Greg nodded back to him, ran to the phone, and called for an ambulance. In the minutes following, he did the best he could to take care of Sky, every once and a while he would shake loose of the blanket, and he'd have to wrap him up again. Finally, after a long and painful wait, the doorbell rang, and Greg let in the paramedics to get him to the hospital.


	4. Blood in Face part 4: The Crazies

"W-what?"

Greg's eyes bulged.

"You mean you CAN'T help him, but he looks fine!"

He pointed his arm to a now completely anesthetized Skyler.

"We were able to help with the symptoms ONLY with either sedating him or knocking him out. Though from what he told me it's more of a mental condition, we have to transfer him to an asylum."

The doctor shook his head.

"I've only seen extremely erratic mental patients behave like he had. Though he is completely aware of his surroundings, it seems he still hasn't recovered from his little episode. The patient told me the story, it doesn't look good, it's probably delusions, but it's not in my jurisdiction to say. The toxicology report will tell us if he's used any drugs, which might be likely, but it will take weeks for us to find that out."

Greg shook his head back

"NNNNNonononononono, drugs are impossible, he's been part of D.A.R.E ever since he was in fifth grade!"

The doctor looked confused.

"Well then what could cause something like that? If it isn't drugs, I've got nothing to go on, but we'll have to wait and see."

Greg was left alone with Sky in an anesthetic induced sleep, he never really thought of him as crazy, but he'll have to now.


	5. Blood in Face part 5: Took Me Away

Skyler woke up on an empty, all white room. Somehow he felt completely fine, and even thinking about the event that led to his sudden insanity didn't faze him. Though he remembered everything he saw, which was odd, the shaking stopped, he could blink as much as he wanted, and he felt relaxed.

"How long was I out?"

He looked around, and tried to move, but he found that he was wearing restraints.

"What the hell? What's going on here!"

He plopped back onto the firm bed. Hearing some clanking sounds, like the sounds made by keys, he decided to look back up just in time to see a man dressed in white enter the room.

"Hey! Finally, someone to talk to, where am I?"

Skyler shouted to the strange man.

"The asylum, ye was out for a long while, feeling better eh? Good, we heard ye was shaking like a leaf when your friend found ya."

Sky's eyes bulged.

"A-Asylum…? You mean I'm in the loony bin? The funny farm? The wacky house?"

The man smirked.

"Yyyyyep, the same. Ya want I should talk to someone and let them converse with ya, so you can get outta that restraint bed?"

Skyler nodded.

"Of course, I feel fine, really."

The man left the room, and Skyler waited, shifting in the bed, playing with the restraints on his ankles with his feet. After a short time, the man came back in with a doctor.

"So, what seems to be the problem?"

The doctor said gleefully, with a smile on his face, a very creepy smile at that.

"Nothing really, I feel fine, can you get me off this bed now? I mean, after you do what you feel is fit, I'm not going to do anything to myself or anyone else, not really my place to do that either, since I'm in here I'm not responsible for myself anymore, and I was never really responsible for anyone else. I understand what's right and wrong, I'm not some raging psychopath. So is it okay if you let me out into a little room or something of the like, other than this bed?"

Skyler made a puppy dog face, and the doctor laughed.

"Oh alright, let him go, he seems sane enough, we'll put him under supervision for now."

The man walked up and untied Sky's restraints, he got up and slid off the bed, walking up to the doctor, and suddenly realizing that he was wearing one of those medical slips, slips as in the robe that patients usually put on while in a hospital.

"Must've been from the Emergency Room."

He muttered, looking down at the cat tapestry printed onto it.

"This is Burd, one of the whitecoats, he'll show you around and then lead you to a psychiatrist."

Burd patted Sky on the shoulder, and lead him out of the room. He followed him to one of the larger rooms where a group of patients were just being themselves.

"This is the Sitting Room; ye'll find lots of crazies spending their extra free time here."

He was then lead through a few hallways, one of which was noise due to the screaming. After he passed through the hallways, he reached another large room with tables throughout.

"The Cafeteria, where the ones who can feed themselves go to eat."

They only stopped for a half a minute before leaving to the hallways once more, reappearing in front of two large wooden doors, littered with holes.

"Ya shouldn't go in there, it's a mess, and we haven't started cleaning up yet either. But I wanted to show ya where it is, this is the Art Room, it's a bit weathered but we'll clean it up real nice."

Burd nodded, wiping the sweat off of his tanned and slightly wrinkled face, turning that giant knob of a nose a few turns, and wiping off his uniform, of which didn't hide how muscular he was.

"Okay, let's get ye to a shrink shall we?"

He chortled, making an odd coughing laugh noise. Sky was very misplaced here, everything seemed taken from a cult classic, all the weird people, strange sights, and disturbing noises. But then maybe… He belonged here? After what happened, it seemed so. Even with the thoughts he carried with him, He followed Burd through more noisy hallways, for what seemed like a half a hour. This walk stretched on more than the others did, and the screaming started to get to him. Now, thinking about what he saw, made him shake. That wasn't a good sign.

"Um, Burd, how far are we from where w-we need to get to? I don't feel so good. Can we take the quieter hallways? The screaming… It's bringing back those symptoms…"

Burd looked back with worry in his eyes.

"Alright little man, I can't risk you freaking out again, not on my watch. Follow me."

But it was only half way into his sentence that Skyler felt the same force he had before shove him back into his nightmare world. Just the memory hit him so hard that he fell to the ground.

"Hey! Are you alright?"

He heard Burd's voice, but couldn't see him. He could only see a hanging corpse of a child, the remnants of the bloody skeleton made him realize that it was the child he saw before. The corpse was hung by a noose made of string; the teddy bear she once clasped was now bloodied and impaled on the string, floating just above her body. He heard laughing, his vision zoomed out to the two scientists, and it was they who were laughing, laughing at her corpse, laughing at her dead parents.

"Hey, little man! Can you hear me?"

Burd's voice barely broke through their cackling.

"K-knock me out!"

Sky shouted.

"I-I don't want to be awake for this!"

He started to lose control of himself again, an expected tremor moved its way up through his body, but felt the sting of a needle point pierce his backside, he felt the point go numb, and spread all over, stopping his shaking. Even though he was wide awake in his mind, in reality he was unconscious, Burd had used the knockout needle he kept tucked away in his shirt, for emergencies.


	6. Blood in Face part 6: The EXPLODIES

Skyler woke up in the same white room he was in before, but it was dark, the lights were turned off, he heard shoring in the corner, coupled with an odd choking laugh noise, Burd was sleeping in a chair in the corner near the door.

"Burd! I'm up!"

He shouted, Burd jumped up out of the chair and blindly wobbled around with an anesthetic needle in hand, looking for what spooked him.

"Whowhatwhenwherewhy?"

He mumbled, looking around the room, brandishing the needle like a hunter.

"Burd, it's me, Skyler, put the needle down."

He grumbled, Burd put the needle away, chortling.

"Ah it's you, little man, that was some sight to see, you looked like Skinny Victor, shaking around like a fish outta water."

Sky raised an eyebrow.

"Skinny… Victor…? What?"

"Skinny Victor was one of the craziest nutcases admitted here, the poor boy had all sorts of problems, the shrieks, the wobbles, mutters and twists and all sorts of awful things."

He looked down.

"Ye only got the shrieks, shakes and twists, when they tried to wake ye up, it was horrible, yer limbs was wobbling all over the place, yer eyes were bulging outta yer head, and ye were doing yoga without the video! I never seen someone bend like you did!"

He looked up, a surprised look on his face.

"Except Skinny Victor! He'd do that all the time. But this is only the second time ye did it, Skinny Victor would get the crazies every two hours, but ye lasted longer than that, and ye had a reason. Next time I'll lead ye away from the louder halls."

Burd was a tall, very muscular man, he towered over Skyler by about a foot, and Sky was nearly six feet tall. Though, he wasn't very smart, resourceful, but not very smart, to put it more blatantly, he was a beefcake. Skyler however, only had little muscle on his bones, he was not too tall and not too skinny, not a gothic shaped anorexic twig, but he was very smart, smart enough to be considered an intellectual, enough to hold a good conversation with a rocket scientist or a mathematician. But all those smarts go to waste if you're mentally insane. He always held his brain back when talking with friends or working, which let him adapt to what was normal on their level. He sighed, and gathered his thoughts.

"Discerning between whatever happened and reality… Almost impossible concerning that it wasn't narcotic induced… Maybe some sort of… Apparition, or epiphany, something hokey like that, aliens, ghosts, bigfoot, no maybe not bigfoot…"

He looked way up, his eyes still open, like he was looking into his brain.

"Maybe it WAS drugs… but I won't know until the test comes back… Until then, ignorance isn't an option, not having your mind open to EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING, decreases your potential, people make a living off of these things…"

Burd discarded all the big words and just went with the simple stuff for readying his reply.

"I've seen some weird things yaknow, things that can't really be explained… Did I ever tell you how Skinny Victor ended up? …He ended up DEAD is what he ended up, oh it was an awful sight, after all that shakin' and screamin', one day he just… Exploded! That's the word, he blew up!... What was left o' him was… Weird lookin', I can't really describe it, it was all red and blobby and fleshy, and it made this awful gurgle sound, we burned it up good, got the flame thrower and charcoaled it real nice…"

Skyler looked up from his bed.

"WHAT? He EXPLODED? That's terrible! What if… What if I explode! That's the worst story ever! Even if it's true! I don't want that to happen to me!"

Burd laughed.

"Oh silly man, ye don't have what he had, calm down. Skinny Victor couldn't even talk, couldn't feed himself, well, couldn't do anythin' himself! I'm sure they'll test ya ta see if yer ok."

A loud knock, almost like someone was banging on the door, broke its way into the room.

"Ah, it must be them!"

Burd's tiny, yet beadlike eyes glimmered, he shuffled his way to the door, opening it like he was operating heavy equipment, because the door was that thick.

"Skyler Benton?"

A deep, serious and almost monotone voice complete with a very mysterious silhouette made its way in.

"Y-yes? Who is it?"

It turned out to be a man in a stiff tuxedo, whenever he moved, there were no wrinkles in his clothes, his black hair feathered back and greased down to make himself look more professional than he already is, his poker face hidden under his sunglasses.

"I'm from the government."

The four words Sky never expected to hear in person, let alone real life.

"The government? I thought you guys were supposed to only show up when something really important happens."

Sky couldn't think of why he would have appeared. He held up his identification, and the badge along with the identification card showed that he was in fact where he said he was.

"You need to come with me, the information from your therapy sessions are now property of the United States of America, Burd, release him and get him in the car."

Skyler was dumbfounded, he stayed perfectly still as Burd untied him from the bed.

"W… What? So I'm government property now…?"

The man nodded.

"You'll get used to it; there are a group of people like you who serve the government just like you will. The information you will bring will be extremely important. But first we need to show you something."

Sky didn't know what was going on but the word 'important' at least eased his mind a little.

"I'm important enough for the government? Gee, I'm bashful, I didn't think I'd get special treatment, so am I ever coming back here?"

The man turned around, Burd had already moved Sky to the door, and he and the man stared eachother down for a bit, since the man was just beyond the doorway as well.

"If you don't want to go, we can always leave you here."

Sky felt a burning sensation of failure slap him under his skin.

"N-no, I wasn't being sarcastic! This is great! I thought I'd be staying here forever!"

He felt his body shake at the force of what was taking a baseball bat with nails through it under his skin; it started to reach out through his arms and his upper chest.

"You'll be visiting here in moderation or, in emergencies, when it is needed. Now come, this won't take long."


End file.
